News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Treating silicon with carbon dioxide gas in plasma processing brings simplicity and control to a key step for making solar cells.

A group of scientists from Korea has discovered that the amount of alkali metal introduced into crystals of flexible thin-film solar cells influences the path that charge carriers take to traverse between electrodes, thereby affecting the light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of the solar cell. Given the immense application potential that such solar cells have today, this finding could be key to ushering in a green future.

Intensive land-use reduces beneficial effects of biodiversity on ecosystem services. This is the main result of a study led by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the University of Bern. It assessed the effects of land management on the links between biodiversity, ecosystem functions and ecosystem services, identified thresholds of management intensity, most important species groups for driving services, and the ecosystem services at risk.

As part of an international collaboration, a team at the HZB has examined the corrosion processes of high-quality BiVO4 photoelectrodes using different state-of-the-art characterisation methods. The result is the first operando stability study of high-purity BiVO4 photoanodes during the photoelectrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This work shows how the stability of photoelectrodes and catalysts can be compared and enhanced in the future.

A deeper understanding of efficiency-limiting processes provides design rules for organic solar cell materials.

Researchers develop a new sponge-like catalyst that is so tough it can make biodiesel from low-grade ingredients containing up to 50% contaminants. And it's so efficient it could double the productivity of manufacturing processes for transforming food scraps, microplastics and old tyres into high-value commodity chemicals.